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Capturing the Friedmans

Synopsis

Who do you believe?

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

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can’t fathom how anyone could see this as ‘unbiased’ (nothing is, but still) when there’s such a clear narrative throughline. some extraordinarily important footage illustrates exactly how stubborn intrafamilial denial can get in these situations, but jarecki’s excision & exclusion of (cn: csa)evidence like this is dangerously irresponsible.

It's nice having your opinion change, isn't it? A film you thought was crap when you saw it a couple of years ago might turn out to be brilliant when you see it again. The ending of a book might make all the trouble getting there seem worth it as everything snaps into place. A great article might make you consider another angle at something you hold to be true, and a good review might make you love something even more than you already did.

There's been a slew of films lately about group pressure, horrid real-life crimes, the reactions people had to them and what ensued afterward. I'm talking here of the documentary The Imposter, as well as the…

I don't watch a lot of documentaries and I recently wondered if that was because I find them very difficult to write about.

Writing reviews on Letterboxd has become almost 50% of my reasoning for my filmwatching these days - I enjoy writing about them just as much as I enjoy watching them, on balance. But with documentaries, I do find my own personal stance towards why I watch films as a whole somewhat interjects with the purpose of many documentaries.

It just doesn't seem quite fitting or right to me to sit here and say that I really enjoyed Capturing The Friedmans because, you know, of the subject matter involved. Additionally so because you read around and, obviously, there…

The Thin Blue Line is long deserving of a rewatch, but I still think my admiration for Jarecki's steadfast determination in presenting the material in his film free of bias (effectively making the audience the "impartial jury"—his own words) outweighs my astonishment at Morris's revolutionary use of form, so at least for the time being I'll continue citing this as my favorite documentary. Any amount of superlatives I could muster can't do the film justice. No documentary comes close to matching this combination of gripping content, unbelievably candid access, and resolutely ethical filmmaking.

Bought the 2-disc DVD set brand new at an insanely cheap price, and it's worth it alone for the bevy of additional footage which includes multiple post-screening Q&As that quickly turn hostile as audience members who were involved in the film (prosecution and defense alike) interject with their (often conflicting) perspectives. The filmmaker commentary will necessitate a rewatch very soon.

Fuck. Another one of those documentaries that's just really hard to watch. I should have guessed Andrew Jarecki was behind this one after recently watching The Jinx. It sucks you in and gets you to start empathizing with the Friedmans. And then the rug is pulled out from under you and you don't know what to believe. It's of course a film with an agenda, but it's agenda is interesting as hell.

As a documentary, Capturing The Friedmans courted a great deal of controversy when it appeared back in 2003. Director Andrew Jarecki's Oscar Nominated doc on a case that had shocked the community of Great Neck, Long Island, back in 1987, was about to reopen old wounds with his take on The Friedman Family's exploits.

This story and documentary came about simply by chance. Director Jarecki was making a short film about New York City's most popular children's entertainers and during his research into clown David Friedman discovered that his father and brother had pled guilty to child abuse allegations back in the late eighties and that he had documented the family's disintegration during the investigation on videotape. To say Jarecki…

This was deeply disturbing, not just for the horrific sexual abuse described, but the way Arnold Friedman’s two sons featured in this documentary treat their mother and idolise their dad. I’ve not felt dislike towards three people in a documentary for a long time. David Friedman in particular seemed very angry and strange for a children’s entertainer and I was interested to learn the director made a short documentary in 2004 about clowns featuring David. Still, a fascinating look at a truly dysfunctional family.

I knew about Oscar-nominated documentary Capturing the Friedmans through its reputation, but I forgot that it was about friggin' child molestation until I decided to finally check it out. Andrew Jarecki digs into the story of Arnold Friedman and Jesse Friedman, a father and son who were accused of abusing a great many children who attended their computer classes, and Elaine Friedman and David Friedman, the mother and son who cannot believe their loved ones could do such horrible things. (Seth Friedman, the third son, declined to be interviewed for the documentary, and his perspective is conspicuously absent.) Luckily, David Friedman liked to make home movies, so Jarecki had access to a lot of pretty incredible footage of extreme family…